I’m in no rush to get a Switch 2, if I ever get one at all. I got an original Switch a year into its life, and I don’t use it frequently enough to justify a new one. But despite this, last night I waited in a midnight line for just shy of two and a half hours to watch someone else get one.
I was on my way to bed around midnight when Aftermath pal Autumn Wright posted that they were picking up their Switch 2 pre-order at a Best Buy a quick bike ride from my house. By “on my way to bed” I mean literally pulling back the covers, but I hurried back into my clothes and biked down. I’d seen pictures of long lines at GameStops and Best Buys, so at first I was confused when I did a loop around an empty mall plaza and didn’t see anyone. Turns out it was at a side entrance to the Best Buy, where two lines, one on each side of the building, snaked at least 100 deep each.
One line was for people who had pre-ordered, while the other was for people who hadn’t. Autumn, in the pre-order line, told me that neither line had moved before I got there, and they proceeded to not really move again for a good half hour. When the store did start to let people in, it was two or three at a time, picking from between the lines via some inscrutable logic. The whole thing was managed by a remarkably calm and cheerful Best Buy worker whom Autumn and I hoped was getting immense amounts of overtime. There were two little kids who seemed excited, and a couple ahead of Autumn who had played Mario Kart while waiting, one of them in a Super Nintendo World Mario Kart jersey, but there wasn’t much fan energy that I could observe, despite how many people were willing to wait in a midnight line. A few passersby asked what was going on, and a cop kept parking nearby and then zipping off while saying “I’ll be back” over their bullhorn for some reason, but otherwise there wasn’t much excitement or spectacle–just, as Autumn pointed out, people waiting in a line.
Those people were all pretty patient, which surprised me (though, as Autumn said, New Yorkers do love waiting in lines). I detected a whiff of restlessness as the wait grew, which increased when rumors fizzled around that the store was running low on commemorative coins, but it felt like most people were being careful not to spread panic or competitiveness. I was especially impressed that everyone was so chill to the solo employee running the line, with the majority of people I saw thanking or fist-bumping him on their way out.
But as the hours wore on, it was hard not to wonder what was taking so long, and not to worry that the store would close or run out of Switches. A bit after 2am we heard the employee say that the store would be closing at 3, and that it had 250 pre-orders; it seemed impossible to me that there could be enough unclaimed Switches for a fraction of the people who hadn’t pre-ordered, the line for which snaked about half the length of the block-long building. I'm not sure if all those people managed to get one last night, but people who purchased from the store today say they had "plenty."
As we got closer to the entrance, a man ahead of us got particularly antsy about the possibility of running out of coins, keeping tabs on how many people were in line ahead of him. When he was finally let in, a person behind us bemoaned that now there was no one to entertain us as we continued to wait. We got close enough to the Best Buy windows to see inside, but there was only a view of a broken escalator leading up to the store itself. This increased the air of mystery: what was going on up there that was taking so long? Were there some kind of festivities, or free-for-all shopping chaos, or, god forbid, another line?
At 2:17am, Autumn was let into the store to unravel the mystery, where they found… a giant empty Best Buy.
Apparently a lot of people were just shopping around for accessories, dragging the whole process out, but after our 2+ hour wait, it took Autumn only 11 minutes to actually walk out with a Switch 2 in hand.
Autumn told me there was some uproar between a sales clerk and the guy eager for a coin, telling me they had run out just ahead of him and that he was angry, raising his voice and threatening to leave a bad review. When Autumn asked an employee how customers had been treating them, they demurred with “mixed.”
Autumn said of watching the interaction, "All through that line his excitement grew... But this stupid coin that none of us even knew about when we pre-ordered these from Best Buy a month ago ruined that, almost as if he waited in that line for nothing. I do feel some sympathy. I wish for him that moment of transformation from excitement was to joy, not disappointed in such a register it came out as anger. That feeling, that intensity, that was cultivated by Nintendo and Best Buy."
The entire vibes around the Switch 2 have been weird, with muddy communication and a lack of clarity around availability both heightening anxiety and making the whole thing sort of subdued. I've never attended something like this before, and Autumn said their only other experience was the midnight launch of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 for Xbox 360 when they were in eighth grade. Autumn told me,
The way people have talked online about the midnight launches of yore ahead of the Switch 2's console launch feels very nostalgic in the sinister marketing sense. Standing in a line outside a Best Buy on Atlantic Ave for two hours while I was sleepy and hungry and needed to pee, I kept asking (rhetorically, rudely) why people have so romanticized standing in a line.
Ours was just one experience of one line, most notably a New York one, where we have perfected the art of affectlessness when we’re crammed together in public. But the experience felt like the whole Switch 2 experience has felt: confusing and a little pointless, though not without its charm. Autumn and I discussed the whole concept of hype to buy something, and I said that I think it’s a bit different for us as journalists. We might be a little exasperated waiting in a late-night line because it’s basically an extension of our workday, but I strive, though usually fail, not to let that lead me into cynicism. The people I saw seemed happy to hang out together on a street corner and get a Switch 2 for their troubles; I enjoyed gossiping about our local music and bike punk scenes with Autumn, even if I am a 43-year-old man whose entire day is now ruined by staying up until 3:30am.
Autumn told me
The lore of midnight launches is just nostalgia. The empty kind. But it did also mean Riley and I got to talk for two hours in person while we waited too long for a line that was moving too slow and we wouldn't have seen each other otherwise. And maybe that couple that was ahead of us will remember playing Mario Kart on their 3DS's together while they waited. And hopefully the one family ahead of us with kids as little as I was when I got my first GameCube will remember the night with such joy to court nostalgia twenty years from now. However empty it actually was.
Additional reporting by Autumn Wright
